Posted
by
Soulskillon Tuesday August 07, 2012 @03:20PM
from the virtually-profitable dept.

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Every day or so of the last six months, Carnegie Mellon computer security professor Nicolas Christin has crawled and scraped Silk Road, the Tor- and Bitcoin-based underground online market for illegal drug sales. Now Christin has released a paper (PDF) on his findings, which show that the site's business is booming: its number of sellers, who offer everything from cocaine to ecstasy, has jumped from around 300 in February to more than 550. Its total sales now add up to around $1.9 million a month. And its operators generate more than $6,000 a day in commissions for themselves, compared with around $2,500 in February. Most surprising, perhaps, is that buyers rate the sellers on the site as relatively trustworthy, despite the fact that no real identities are used. Close to 98% of ratings on the site are positive."

When I was in Thailand in 1974 there were only four drugs you couldn't buy in a pharmacy, and they were marijuana, cocaine, LSD and heroin. LSD and cocaine were completely unavailable, the place was awash with heroin and pot, and you needed no prescription for any other drug. Ecstasy might not have been invented then, but they had some amphetamines that one pill would keep you awake for two days straight. There was a salve available that was used for terminating pregnancies if the woman rubbed it on their belly button, or induce an out of body experience if you rubbed it on your temples. Quaaludes were available in pharmacies without a prescription as well.

Oddly, although the country was awash with heroin, the only heroin addicts I ran across were all GIs.

Ecstasy is slang for MDMA and nothing else. The fact that unscrupolous drug dealers and people who know as much about drugs as the average person knows about physics doesn't make it slang for anything else.

Yes, your dealer who just bought a cheap batch of pills with 2C-B + caffeine + amphetamine will tell you otherwise but that's because he's trying to sell his crappy pills. It's sort of like how if alcoholic beverages were illegal, you can bet there would be people trying to sell all sorts of crap as "whis

Though there aren't many countries allowing you to buy it legally, I agree that it SHOULD be legal. Let people take responsibility for their own lives and allow them to kill themselves if they wish to.

Drugs ruin much more than just the user's life. It affects the entire family. What is a child supposed to do when their parents uses drugs all day and there's no food on the table? "take responsibility" for their parents' lives?

That being said, some drugs are socially acceptable in the western world (despite how harmful they are). Tobacco and alcohol are the two main ones. Any drug that's less harmful and less addictive than these two should be automatically decriminalized, starting with marijuana.

Well, then you criminalize the actual CRIME - driving while impaired. You can't criminalize behavior that's not criminal. It's like saying you can't buy a car because it *might* be used in the commission of a crime.
There are thousands of things that are already illegal that pretty much cover the bases - everything from reckless driving to child safety...these laws are perfectly capable of punishing real criminals instead of filling our prisons with responsible users.

Well, then you criminalize the actual CRIME - driving while impaired. You can't criminalize behavior that's not criminal. It's like saying you can't buy a car because it *might* be used in the commission of a crime.
There are thousands of things that are already illegal that pretty much cover the bases - everything from reckless driving to child safety...these laws are perfectly capable of punishing real criminals instead of filling our prisons with responsible users.

Using the same logic, driving while impaired is only considered a crime because you may end up killing someone - hence we should decriminalize driving while impaired and only arrest people when they run over and kill someone - which is the real crime.

Prevention is the key word. The reason why drug usage (just as driving when intoxicated) is considered a crime is prevention.

I think the difference is that if you drink or do drugs in your living room, you are only increasing the risk for yourself. If you drink or do drugs while driving, then you are increasing the risk for yourself and others who do not wish to share your risk.

You and I have a pretty different definition of the word "stop". That's 1million arrests per year, of drunk people. Can you imagine the numbers of incidents not ending in an arrest? Staggering. The laws are basically just cash cows for the states/etc. They really do nothing for prevention. People like to talk about the reduction of deaths but if you look at the stats they follow right along with non-alcohol related vehicle deaths, which probably means it has a lot more to do with vehicle safety featur

It was as late as the 80s in Wyoming. Drinking age was 19, there was no open container law, and you could buy mixed drinks from a drive up window. I don't know if there were more accidents or not, but there was definitely a lot more drinking and driving back then, from my experience. I got a DUI back then, and it was $100 ticket.

It ends up costing 10-15k now, so I have to think that's more of a deterrent.

Attitudes like this remind me of the TSA. "Anyone could be a terrorist. The solution is clearly to infringe upon everyone's rights by molesting them at airports!" That drug user might commit a crime while on drugs. Futilely attempt to ban all drugs for everyone while wasting countless amounts of taxpayer dollars in the process!

I hate when people put "private" in front of prison in this context. Like public prisons aren't in the same boat. Just say "special interests". Instead you choose to make an apparent attack on capitalism, when it is really about big government and crony capitalism.

There are certain things that should not be handled by capitalism. Prisons are one of them. So, it's not an attack on capitalism per se, but yes, it's a specific attack against private prisons.

The penal system is not suitable turf for free-market competition. The market forces push in the direction of maximizing the numbers of incarcerated through lobbying for "tougher" laws with mandatory minimum sentences, and prison conditions that maximize recidivism. Pushing back in the other direction are compassion, basic human decency, and the 8th amendment -- all of which will cut into profits, so anyone who runs a prison decently will be underbid by the more ruthless. And when they cut corners and people suffer and die, heck, that's prison life, don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

When has criminalizing something actually stopped it from happening? Criminalizing and sentencing only exists to give victims some sense of justice, after it's all over and can never be undone.

This is about *prevention*.

Criminalizing something doesn't prevent it by way of disincentive. Swift, public punishment of perceived transgressors, however, does.

The intent of the penal system is to demonstrate to the rest of society that those who transgress societies rules will be punished, and therefore deter future events by people other than the people being punished. It's kind of lost its value as a deterrent these days, at least in the U.S., since punishment is neither swift, nor is it public, and we take great pains to prote

The main question here is whether or not crime rates are lower in these countries, and they are not, to my knowledge. The Netherlands with its much laxer narcotics regime however is taking in prisoners from other countries because they haven't enough to fill their own.

The intent of the penal system is to demonstrate to the rest of society that those who transgress societies rules will be punished, and therefore deter future events by people other than the people being punished.

I must be some sort of commie idealist then. I thought the point of a penal system is to rehabilitate people into being productive members of society.

The US system has not been following this philosophy for a long time, if ever. But the point of a penal system should not be punishment. Most

Tell that to all the people on the bus that die when the bus driver wrecks the bus because he/she is high. Or the on coming car that runs into the bus because the driver of the car is high. I doubt that the person taking the drugs would necessarily be the only one to die as a result of their actions.

That anecdote would hold far more weight if not for the immense number of people killed on the roads every year by drivers who aren't high on illegal drugs.

Here in reality, believe it or not, the medical route is actually cheaper.

Clean needle programs, access to cheap clean drugs and treating addiction as a medical problem not a criminal one is cheaper and actually works. I know it lacks that self righteous feeling, and that is a downside, but it actually works. Unlike your stupid and immoral plan.

Sorry but diabetes and liver-failure is not a quick kill-all for alcohol addicts. They just get transplants or waste medical dollars.

An alcoholic is highly unlikely to receive a liver transplant. They screwed up that organ of their own free will, therefore, we reserve these precious resources for people who suffer organ failure through no fault of their own. You are simply making shit up.

Theft is already illegal. Punish the ones that do steal and not the ones that don't. Anything else is very similar to collective/preemptive punishment.

If you're found transporting drugs, like in Singapore, that's the death sentence

Yes, I definitely want the government to have the power to execute people merely for transporting drugs that people willingly consume. No innocent person could ever be executed, the government would never abuse this, and executing people for transporting something is worthwhile.

None of this 5 years where my tax dollars are used to give them food and shelter.

So sorry that your tax dollars are being used for prisoners. Better that we kill everyone who ends up in prison! Anything to save a buck.

All the while destroying other people's lives while they're high, breaking into people's homes so they can steal to feed their habit, and a whole host of other issues, including medical as their bodies get ravaged but which I have to pay for (thanks Roberts).

Nicotine is the most addictive drug known to man. But you don't generally see people breaking into homes for money to buy a pack of smokes. Why? Because it's legal, so it's cheaper and more available. You don't generally see people worrying about paying for other peoples' lung cancer either. Why? Well, partly because the people who bitch about these things tend to be smokers themselves, power of the industry lobby, etc....but there's also a big part that is IT'S LEGAL. If it's legal, you aren't going to get fired for being addicted, you aren't going to avoid seeking help for your addiction due to fear of criminal prosecution, so you're more likely to have a job and be able to take care of your own medical needs.

The problems that you cite as reasons why drugs must remain illegal are not problems caused by drugs, but problems caused by _drug prohibition_.

and allow them to kill themselves if they wish to.
All the while destroying other people's lives while they're high, breaking into people's homes so they can steal to feed their habit, and a whole host of other issues, including medical as their bodies get ravaged but which I have to pay for (thanks Roberts).

Right, because A) all drug users are violent criminals who steal for a living, and B) forcing otherwise law abiding citizens to deal with career criminals in order to enjoy a mind-altering substance the government has decided, in a fair and just manner of course, ist verboten, is totally the right way to deal with it.

That, or you're spouting hyperbole based on your limited understanding of the topic.

I'll get modded down but don't care. What we need is to be more brutal. If you're found transporting drugs, like in Singapore, that's the death sentence. None of this 5 years where my tax dollars are used to give them food and shelter. Whack 'em.

Aah, how quintessentially un-American. You deserve to be modded into oblivion.

"These other people engage in an activity I know nothing about other than the fact that it's a minor inconvenience to me, and so they should be executed by the State!"

That's not an argument in favor of legalizing drugs, but an argument for restricting the access of tobacco and alcohol. Such as only selling it to adults, in bars, outlawing attempts to market it to children and so on.

That's not an argument in favor of legalizing drugs, but an argument for restricting the access of tobacco and alcohol. Such as only selling it to adults, in bars, outlawing attempts to market it to children and so on.

...

Which we already do, and yet hundreds of thousands of people are killed each year due to the use of said drugs regardless.

I mostly agree with you, but I'd actually mod GP up if I hadn't posted already. I believe that opinions I disagree with should be widely seen and thoroughly shredded, all in public. I usually only mod down stuff that's either totally incoherent or offtopic, uses way too many personal attacks, or is so obviously wrong and offensive that it could only be trolling.

They do that because drugs are artificially expensive due to the legal BS around them.

If the risk of jail was removed the cost of manufacturing, transporting, and distributing things like Cocaine would fall thru the floor. Only the most hopelessly strung out junkie would be unable to support their habit, if by no other means than panhandling.

We've tried that. We've spent billions attempting to stop drug dealers and traffickers. We've changed the laws to allow cops to break into suspected dealer's homes without knocking at 3 AM (occasionally killing innocent people who think they're being attacked by criminals and start fighting back). We've tried 3-strikes provisions so that repeat offenders are in jail forever. We've tried going to the countries where this stuff is grown and shooting people. We've tried all sorts of attempts at brutality, and none of it has led to the slightest drop in drug use or the potency of available drugs.

> Do you really believe that? it's driven up costs, and as someone that believes in economics it> has therefore lowered abuse.

How fucking scientific. Maybe I believe in pink unicorns.

You are wrong, not because economics is wrong, but because you are applying it in a simplistic manner, looking at only one part of a much larger issue. Its not just a matter of cost or cost going up. These are not apples to apples comparisons by any stretch of the imagination.

Whats gone up? well cost yes, but so has potency and purity. Do you ever hear of opium smokers doing anything?

Partially its because you can't get opium. You can certainly get heroin. And the price of heroin has gone up, but, its far more potent, its in a pure form (not counting any cut) and often injected. Its very strong, much stronger than the smoked opium that has been all but removed from the market.

Crystal meth. Similar. All other, safer, less potent stimulents are relegated to obscurity, shut out of the market. What remains is very potent and pure...and I don't mean pure in the "FDA regulations make sure everything on the label is actually whats in there" pure... I mean "Holy crap that stuff is over 90% methamphetamine, you better be careful".

Not to mention.... Ive known a few users of a few drugs.... most people don't just "do anything". I know more than a few people who only ever smoked pot a handful of times because they didn't like how it made them feel or otherwise didn't enjoy it (which is how I have come to feel about alcohol actually... I don't refuse to drink as a rule, but its been a while since I even accepted a beer offered)

A rather common model, amongst those who look at these issues, is the "Self medication" model, which looks at a large amount of drug use as little more than habbits that self medicate for other conditions (normally with the assumption that this is a bad thing, I tend to question whether its not often more effective than most think, I know people who have eliminated prescription drugs with some nasty side effects in favor of a little pot before bed.... and several others with other conditions).

I think part of the issue here is that you are forgetting that peoples behavior isn't dictated by what you think is rational for them. You are not taking their real motivations into account. You are just assuming that changing one motivating factor must have the effect that you would predict, without actually looking deeper at whats really happening.

Point conceded here. Some drugs do cause people to behave monstrously. And alcohol even more so.

breaking into people's homes so they can steal to feed their habit

Point NOT conceded. A great number of people are alcoholics. However, there is no great wave of crime due to alcoholics breaking into people's homes to steal their liquor and/or money to buy more alcohol. Why is this? Two reasons. First, it is legal and therefore, moderately cheap. If you can hold down a job, you can afford to be a drunk. Second, alcohol use is socially accepted, for the most part, and thus a boozer is more likely to be able to hold a job as long as he's not falling down drunk at work. This ability to hold a job, due to social acceptance, is what enables the drunk to continue to purchase alcohol without robbing people.

You are allowing you anger to dictate possible solutions, instead of thinking about the actual outcomes. Would a death penalty on all drug traffickers actually cause a decrease in the amount of drugs consumed? That's nothing but a hypothesis. A mountain of evidence is available which suggests that the death penalty does nothing to deter criminals. They don't think they're going to get caught in the first place, so what matter is it what the punishment is? The death penalty gives you an adrenaline rush: "Justice, fuck yeah!" But that's all it does.

You are obviously uninterested in actually solving the problem, and more interested in watching people die.

Some drugs do cause people to behave monstrously. And alcohol even more so.

No drug, not even alcohol, can bring out of a person something that was not already in that person. A lot of people have unresolved emotional baggage, insecurities, and unhealthy tendencies that they barely keep in check, mostly through fear of consequence. This is not real character or real strength and the dissolution of inhibition can cause it to break down.

What drugs can do is break down the illusion of being normal that many fucked-up people try so hard to project. There are a lot of fucked up pe

No drug, not even alcohol, can bring out of a person something that was not already in that person. A lot of people have unresolved emotional baggage, insecurities, and unhealthy tendencies that they barely keep in check, mostly through fear of consequence. This is not real character or real strength and the dissolution of inhibition can cause it to break down.

Please stop spouting armchair psychology.

The relationship between drugs and psychosis is complex and not completely understood... but your point-of-view is hopelessly outdated. Drug-related psychosis has little to do with the "dissolution of inhibition".

People who have real character don't become "a different person" when drunk or high.

Drug cartels have long moved into using violence for crimes outside drugs. Mexico, Columbia, Somalia, Italy and on and on. Drug cartels expand to fill other vacuums they perceive as needing met. Extortion and kidnapping are two of their favorite vacuums and result in the murders of so many people that armored vehicles are routinely more popular in places like Columbia than Iraq.

The idea that legalizing drugs would somehow get rid of the violence from the drug cartels runs smack into the reality of a lot of very violent non-drug related crime. Look at places like Mexico and you will see that people are routinely murdered in large quantities by drug cartels for things that have nothing to do with drugs. The cartels have learned a life of crime and violence and will continue that life until a significant outside change forces them to change.

It's ultimately about the money. Yes, there's dirty people and organizations in the drug trade, and they aren't going to become saints overnight when you legalize it. But legalizing it, and doing a decent job of defending the legal trade in it, would deprive these gangs of something like 90% of their money (yes I just made that number up). In what world is it not worthwhile to eliminate the majority of your opponent's funding? With the loss of their only really highly profitable operation, the larger organizations will probably dissolve into a bunch of smallish bands that don't coordinate their operations. The violence may get worse for a short time as the smaller chunks that manage to retain some sort of group cohesion may try to get into kidnapping and whatnot, but that's much less profitable and much easier for law enforcement to root out. Long-term, it can only be a good thing.

Break it down further and you'll figure it out. Instead of country, try country+drug. Then you can look at situations like alcohol in the United States. Maybe compare that to alcohol in Saudi Arabia, or cocaine in the United States, or even (country+drug+year) alcohol in 1927 United States.

To my layman's eye (I'm not a statistician) there appears to be a correlation, where the more strenously the government insists that the public use black markets for a commodity, the more violent the trade in that commodity is.

Decriminalization is nice for the end users, but it doesn't make a difference as far as large-scale organized crime. To destroy the cartels, you have to legalize the entire supply chain. They aren't really legal if you can't point to legit corporations who grow, process, and ship the stuff by the ton, with full legal protection against theft, fraud, etc. From the perspective of the organization doing the production and distribution, taxes and legal compliance are a pain in the butt, but it beats having to maintain a private security force to protect your interests and operating in a highly unpredictable environment where your product could be stolen at any time, and your only recourse is to figure out who probably did it yourself and send your own private army after them.

Perhaps. But why? The war on drugs is largely about publicity and money. Making big, quick busts to show off on the evening news, and confiscating cash to use to buy police equipment (in some southern US states, there are MASSIVE police departments with practically ZERO public funding -- they fund themselves with confiscated drug cash.) You can't really confiscate bitcoin easily, and going after the buyers is going to be a lot of police effort for very little PR win and no real cash win (particularly since the buyers are located all over the globe)

Compared to the ease of snapping up kids selling drugs on the street corner, I don't think it's worth their time to go after this kind of traffic. At least not yet.

Easy to work around. Make fake buyers to buy from fake sellers to boost your seller rating. That's assuming the entire thing isn't compromised, as was the case for some carding forums they've shut down.

So in theory I could acquire a good number of anonymous bitcoin and have my shiny new drugs drop shipped to an ex, or maybe some poor politician I disagree with. Or, I could just ship it directly to me and claim I was being targeted. Just, you know, *theoretically*.

By following the money. Server logs show which online personas bought and sold what, intercepting packages can tie those to physical addresses and identities, and comparing bitcoin IDs on suspects' computers with the block chain provides irrefutable cryptographic proof that the transactions took place. They could probably even wind everything up into one big RICO case, and then everyone who used silkroad is potentially on the hook for every transaction that took place there.

Do you think the DEA cares about going after kids who buy $100 worth of LSD?

Cash directly to the wallet addresses from Walmart or 7-11. Wear a hat. Do you really think they are going to canvas every 7-11 and Walmart in North America (assuming that's where you are) for their video logs of who did a moneygram? Walmart at least doesn't require ID. Fake all the info and be on your way.

How exactly would your theoretical honeypot work? Only buyers need to provide anything remotely identifiable (e.g., shipping address). Do you think the DEA cares about going after kids who buy $100 worth of LSD?

(2010 - crime - drug manufacturing arrests) Of the 1,638,846 arrests for drug law violations in 2010, 81.9% (1,342,215) were for possession of a controlled substance. Only 18.1% (296,631) were for the sale or manufacture of a drug.

Are you insane?How is a drug conviction going to help a kid? Not being able to get college loans will not help him, making him unemployable will not help him, sending him to jail for relatively harmless LSD while letting his brother destroy his liver with alcohol is not helping anyone either.

Why? They bust a big dealer they get cash, they get great PR, and if you have any faith in the war on drugs (which most Americans don't, but assuming the DEA agents do...) you get to keep some product out of the hands of a whole bunch of kids.

Bust the kid, you get no cash, you get terrible PR from his friends and family for ruining the rest of his life (I've got a friend, smartest person I've ever known, who went from aiming for a PhD in Chemistry to flipping burgers at McDonalds over ONE drug charge.)...the only upside is you MAY have stopped a single kid from using drugs.

Should we be surprised that the feedback is overwhelmingly positive? The owners of the site make money when the feedback is good; the site could die if the feedback was bad. They control the forum, including the ability to delete feedback. Connect the dots.

You wouldn't trust a company that self-reports; a company that controls the forum for user reports has the same underlying power to censor negative anecdotes as any other company that regulates from within.

Scamming may be common in the, get in your car and hit some street corner for some random dealer mindset but no one I know operates that way. They all have a "guy" who they call and it's usually in the "guys" interest to formulate a good relationship, it benifits both, you know you can trust this person so you'll continue to do business with him, and the seller grows his client base. Same thing here.

Drug war between opposite drug clan are relatively rare , and when they do happen they usually only impact seller, not buyer. This is a business you can only advertise by "mouth to ear" so most seller understand that if they screw up, their business will drop. That's why you get so many positive rating. In fact, you get a more likely good relation ship with your dealer to which you are a known face and source of money, than for an anonymous corporation for which you are a blimp in a statistic.

Actually, drug dealers are the ones hoping that the war on drugs continues, or they'll be out of work.

This is seriously on-topic. I know a pot dealer/grower who is spending a good chunk of his income fighting against continued/expanded legalization and medical marijuana initiatives because the ones already in place in this state are financially crippling him. Suddenly he's no longer the long-haired hippie: he has a suit, short hair, and shows up at every local public meeting on zoning to argue that allowing marijuana dispensaries is immoral and a danger to our children. It's sort of funny to watch, although I'm also fairly pissed at him because I am personally in favor of medical marijuana being easily available.

Not every transaction, when most probably some of the buyers are resellers. Besides the production of some the drugs is violently controlled. Switzerland provides government made heroin for free. That's harm reduction, and it's proven to be effective too.

Perhaps we should have a press-blackout on any undesirable or criminal element of society? No more news about terrorist strikes, deaths in military action, political protests which disrupt traffic, the homeless (vagrancy), or the actions of members of congress. Thus we could all live in a happy carefree world where inherently good people never succumb to famous degenerate modeled behavior?

Not only this, but I'm sure for transactions where there actually WAS a problem or the whole deal just went south, the buyer is probably... um... not quite in a position to give feedback on the website. Whether you read that as "overdosed", "poisoned by tainted products", or just "face down in a ditch with a bullet in the head" all depends on what you'd expect from a typical drug deal.

It is also an example of something no one would use for cut just for that reason. Unlike what DARE taught you, drug dealers are just working folks trying to make a living. Killing customers cuts into the bottom line.

Yes, people do die from high dosages. That is the result of a drug war that means users can never be sure of the purity of the product they buy. You will of course notice that all alcohol and pharmaceuticals are labeled as to their strength. I am not sure how you can blame anyone but those who s

Bitcoin fails one of the fundamental rules of a currency - store of value. Yeah yeah, you can talk about hyper-inflation of 'real' currencies, but even with hyper-inflation you have stability of direction. Bitcoin can halve or double on any given day. By that token, it has failed. You can't use it as an investment - your exchange risk (FX risk) outweighs any kind of interest you'd get.

Now, in certain particular instances, its advantages (anonymity) makes the failure of store of value less critical. If I con

Western Union is not a dispute mediator. If they were, they wouldn't be the tool of choice for Nigerian scammers would they? They offer rapid international cash transfers with no questions asked, that's pretty much their business model.

You can have low-trust dispute mediation with Bitcoin, by the way. The way it works is you send coins to a 2-of-3 output. The keys are yours, the sellers and a mediators. If you and the seller agree the transaction was good, you both sign a transaction sending the coins to th

Well, I think it is thriving when you consider how they're doing it. This isn't some dude in the projects on a street corner. This is a website that anybody can go browse, select from a variety of things which you're not supposed to be able to get, and then pay for in a way which is untraceable. It's basically a "Yeah, see if you can stop us", kinda deal. The fact that they're able to flip their middle finger to any and all drug prohibition laws and sit there and rake in a non-trivial amount of money in the process... that strikes me as a major shift in how prohibition laws will need to be enforced (or if they'll even try to) in the future.